Your friend is lucky to have a friend like you. Be careful though. If she tends to latch onto people like she did with her husband and the "close friend," then she probably has a need to be taken care of or maybe even controlled. She is not being responsible for herself and her own life. If you encourage her to step away from these destructive relationships, she could try to build a similar relationship with you. It doesn't have to turn out that way, but is something to watch out for. It may take therapy for her to be able to break out of that pattern.

I relate to your friend on a lot of levels, and I wish that I had someone like you to take an interest and notice how destructive that kind of dependent relationships can be, but at the same time I wonder if I created my relationships out of my own unwillingness to take care of myself or lack of confidence, and maybe people like my husband really tried to encourage me to be a stronger individual and I wouldn't do it, and that might be why we are in the situation we are in now. I also feel lucky that I didn't fall in with people like her husband and "close friend" who seem so obviously out to take advantage of her.

Good luck helping your friend. I really would encourage her to get some professional help, because this is a pattern for her and it isn't so easy to change. I'm sure that your influence will help her, but you will probably have to be pretty firm sometimes. It's nice to know that people like you are out there.

Rap